Tag: Allama Iqbal

Allama Muhammad Iqbal, a doctor of philosophy in Solar Sciences died before his age of death but lived beyond ages through his words of wisdom. Allama Iqbal was influenced by very few scholars of all genre. The scholar who tops the list of Iqbal’s favourite is Maulana Rumi. The second soul fathers of Iqbal were Bayazid Bastami and Syed Hassan Mir scholars of Islam and mysticism. The western names are also popular amongst the influencers of Iqbal such as; Aristotle, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Thomas Walker Armold, Henri Bergson. These names as mentioned are people who either taught or knew Islam in one way or the other. Hence, with their findings and understanding about God, Iqbal was influenced about laws of nature and God running through the universe in forms of soul, non-physical and sense physically. Therefore, this article is aimed to highlight and explain some of the poetic verses from Baal-e-Jibrail which play around soul and sense.

Some of the popular quotes from Iqbal’sinfluences are as below:

“Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.”– Henri Bergson

~ Here Henri claims man to be a man of action-sense while he is a thinking soul; a sense of soul. But in the latter part of the sentence, he warns man to be tactful – sense while he is thinking-soul

One of my favourites from Henri is:

“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating one self endlessly.”

Thomas Arnold wrote a book on Al-Dawat-ul-Islami, a great Historian of Islamic art, British Orientalist, taught at Muhammad Anglo-Oriental College.

About Bal-e-Jibreel

Refocusing the article to Bal-e-Jibreel, it is said Iqbal wrote Bal-e-Jibreel, not at one single place. Instead, it was written when he was travelling through Italy, Palestine, France, Spain and Afghanistan. Bal-e-Jibreel consists of ghazals, poems, quatrains, epigrams and intellectual belief of one (mysticism).

The work of Iqbal contains 15 Ghazals addressed to God and 61 Ghazals and 22 Quatrains addressed to Ego (Khudi), Loving, Faith, Knowledge, Intellect and Freedom, all of these variables giving meaning to sense and soul.

The author of the article is inspired to shed light on areas which interest her very being of sense and soul. These certain poetic verses have a magnificent elaboration of sense and Soul. Sense by Iqbal is defined as, “form or physical appearance,” scientifically anything which could be felt from 5 senses. While soul by Iqbal is a magnificent Concept which he, in his lifetime was unable to fully comprehend. The soul is a mystic presence of any physical being. Iqbal in the following verses.

English Translation:

“Will you not be mine? Be NOT mine,but be your Own Right.”

The significance of the soul is found not overtly but covertly. It is not when you look into rather when you reflect upon yourself you find the meaning and sense of soul. When you reflect you either Reinforce or reduce certain attributes which you may find right or wrong respectively. Hence, the soul is the compass of body which sets the direction for a being to decide where to go and choose ways to reach it. Subsequently, when we look back in time, Rene’ Descartes a philosopher and scientists in physics foundation of the 1600s kept a motto of, “I think therefore I am” until he found the meaning of life after 15 years of his work about universe, later he modified the motto and claimed, “ I regard with compassion Therefore I am”. The journey from think to regard with compassion is long and difficult but once an individual reflects upon himself on the journey he finds the true meaning of soul and humanity.

Mann ki duniya! mann ki duniya souz o masti, jazab o shouq

Tann ki duniya! tann
ki duniya sood o soda, maker o fann

English Translation:

“World of soul—the world of fire and ecstasy and longing:

World of sense—the world of gain that fraud and cunning blight; urdu blog.”

Line 1: The universe of soul is non-existent but existential in some mystic form. All that is physical has a soul- a presence which cannot be touched but makes it felt, incomprehensible yet identifiable. The world of soul is covert, deep and inside out, preaching the curiosity, to find out why, how and what makes oneself unite with supreme. With this unison one becomes a craving fire, sometimes the fire becomes blue when it reaches its ultimate form (physical) but that is not its end. The universe of soul is vast and deep so with a new aim the fire is kindled red. This process of liberation is continuous and progressive until the physical form breathes Inna-al-Haq. No physical form can meet the level of the soul’s mysticism in his human architect. Hence, to meet this universe, ones soul is released from body in the experience of parallel universe and returns to the form lightening the human form to a better version. So the longing is the longing of body for the lost soul and soul longs for the ultimate substance which enlightens and awakens its core form. Now the soul reaches the stage of ecstasy where it rejoices the form it has reached. This fire burns ego, hatred, rationale, logic to ashes and liberates the soul to achieve its highest form.

Pragmatically, the world is not linear, it is not a straight line. It is rather a spiral of many straight lines whose one end is the beginning of another. Simultaneously, when a soul is liberated from one shell of energy it is prepared to enter a new shell of experience. And that’s how, in the journey of uncertainty the soul travels with faith, love, knowledge, intellect and freedom. In this journey of soul one is free from the desires of making allies other than its own source which makes him sufficient to face what has to come. “Sufficiency is not having all that you may need, sufficiency is being content in what you have, and using that to reach where you want.”

Treasure of the soul once won is never lost again:

Treasure gold, a shadow—wealth soon comes and soon takes flight.

Line 1: The wealth of covert world is wisdom, faith, love & freedom. When this wealth is achieved it is forever. People can take away worldly gains but no one can take ones knowledge, courage, freedom to think and persistence to make things happen. It is in soul’s power to make impossible happen when it connects to the mystic form of energy. This way its capability of resilience and ability to create is transformed to a higher level, resulting souls to travel like electrons or energy. Just like energy is neither created nor destroyed it only changes its form so is with the soul; the phenomenon makes the life of soul forever and the wealth which it shared with the universe is passed on to thousands of generations. The ownership of money is transferred but the ownership of knowledge isn’t.

Line2: Gold, money they all fade with the demand of time. The value of money is deteriorated with time. There is a fluctuation in the value of gold always. But the universe of the soul has a value which never declines. Einstein rightly said, “Be a man of value not a man of success.” Success is temporary, it comes and goes, the metrics of success change with time but value, value stands upright generations after generations, tested and verified. They only enrich and never depreciate.

Heart, as the religion of heart and soul, is love. It is difficult to divide humanity on beliefs. More than the differences what humans majorly share are similarities. How insane it is to divide human based on their differences instead of uniting them on the basis of how alike they appear. It is the picture of the heart that must reflect human similarities with each other: other than overt differences of cast, colour, creed, ethnicity and religion. All religions teach faith, love, freedom, humanity and brotherhood. It takes compassion and connection of the soul to understand the universe of unity. The congregation of the soul has never learned about divide and rule policy. This world does not believe in ownership of insignificants, it knows everything belongs to one higher form which none has seen. He is the only source, all else are medium. All seek from one all are provided by one. The ultimate energy (God) reads the blueprint of the soul and decides for His people, therefore, he overlooks the actions (physical stimulus) if the intentions (metaphysical stimuli) are pure. His dashboard of energy is struck by the wavelength of the internal world and if the energies of the internal world are greatly positive as a summation, the negative impacts of actions are subtracted. In the end, irrespective of worldly division He unites with all. The senses can be divided but the souls are all alike which unite with the source of energy, the energy only divides with choice of direction towards or away the source.

The sense of the soul is lost if the soul strives to seek
from the sense or soul of the medium (human form) instead of the one who
created it- the source. In this way the soul is trapped by the sense of the
other human being and cannot be liberated. The human being loses the ownership
of his soul and sense with in the process of supplication to human instead of
God.